Meet Tom Pridham, Conservative candidate for Battersea

Posted on June 22, 2024 by David

Tom Pridham is the Conservatives candidate in the Battersea constituency for the 2024 General Election. Some of our readers may recognise Tom, as he’s currently also a very active and enthusiastic ward Councillor for the Lavender ward (covering the south of the street, between Lavender Hill and Clapham Common). We and our partners at Clapham Junction insider are inviting the candidates to short interviews – so you can learn more about who they are, what they believe in, and their plans to improve Battersea and help its residents. Details of all the candidates, and the other interviews, are here.

Could you introduce yourself to our readers? I have lived in the area for ten years now, first near Clapham Junction, then in Balham. 18 months ago, my partner and I bought our first property, a flat just off Lavender Hill. I’ve served on Wandsworth Council for two years, representing the ward where I live, Lavender. My main political interests are:

  • Housing, in particular making home ownership a more attainable ambition for people who are struggling to get on the housing ladder.
  • Crime – I’ve spoken to lots of people locally who feel less safe than they did a few years ago and one of my priorities as a councillor is working with the police to ensure that residents’ concerns are addressed.
  • High Streets – We have fantastic high streets in Battersea, in particular, of course Northcote Road. One of my main focuses as a councillor has been campaigning to reinstate the excellent, and popular, summer weekend pedestrianisation of Northcote Road which was sadly cancelled by the Labour administration in the Town Hall.
  • Foreign and Defence Policy – This may seem far removed from everyday concerns but the world has become a more dangerous place in the last few years and I believe it is important to take these threats seriously. I’m very proud of the UK’s support for our Ukrainian allies and also the large number of Ukrainian refugees that have been taken in by residents in Battersea, and Wandsworth more broadly.

Tell us something about you our readers may not know… My parents are both lifelong Labour supporters! I was brought up in a household where I was encouraged to discuss politics and express my views. I am not sure they expected me to be a Conservative though…

What makes the Battersea constituency, where you have lived for quite some years, special for you? There is a great deal that is special about our area. But for me, it is the variety on offer – the town centres in Battersea, Nine Elms, Balham, and Clapham Junction, the excellent green spaces (Battersea Park being the best park in London of course), and the thriving local businesses. All this combined with the diverse range of people and international feel (my ward has a thriving French community) makes it a great place to live.

You worked as a wine expert. What can you bring from your previous activity to the role of an MP? Yes, I worked for quite a few years as a sommelier. I think people often have a misconception about the role and think that it is extremely glamorous. In reality, it consists of working long hours (I once worked twenty 13 hour days on the bounce) to very high standards for modest pay. There are several things that transfer well into politics – firstly an understanding of what it’s like to work in a job that is not highly paid despite requiring hard work. Secondly, an ability to relate to different people (other staff and customers) and get a sense of what they want. Thirdly, and perhaps most importantly, a resilience and ability to put in hard graft.

The life of a local councillor is a lot of hard, unrewarded work behind the scenes. What have you learned as a councillor here that you will bring to national politics? Yes, being a councillor can sometimes be hard work, particularly given that most councillors undertake their duties alongside a day job, as I do. In order to do the job effectively, one has to be very good at time management and prioritisation; skills that are essential to being a good Member of Parliament. The most important thing I’ve learnt as a councillor is that it is absolutely impossible to put people in boxes. We often hear about how a certain group of people think one thing and if you have a certain opinion on one issue you will have a specific opinion on another. In reality, every person you speak to is unique. It’s important to take everyone on their own terms.

What are you most proud of doing in your time as a Battersea councillor? As an opposition councillor, it can sometimes be difficult to achieve change, as the majority party run the Council and effectively makes all the key decisions. The things I’ve been proudest of as a councillor are actually the individual pieces of casework that I’ve managed to get resolved. People come to their local councillor with a whole range of problems such as lifts not working, noise nuisances and unfair fines. Many people are (often for understandable reasons) somewhat cynical and disillusioned with politics and politicians. Being able to actually effect change and deliver things for people can be very rewarding. After I resolved one such issue, someone told me that I had “restored their faith in public service”, which was a very nice thing for them to say.

    With the busiest station at the heart of Battersea, and many of us relying on public transport – what local transport improvements & developments would you push for as an MP? Transport is a big issue and one that I have focused on quite a bit in my campaign. We are lucky to have Clapham Junction as such a big transport hub right at the heart of the constituency. My view is that we need to find ways to take the pressure off it and improve transport connectivity to the north. The first thing we should do is make it easier to cross the river on foot by building the Cremorne footbridge, giving residents in North Battersea better access to connections north of the river. The second thing we should do is reopen Battersea High Street Station, in between Clapham Junction and Imperial Wharf on the overground. Finally, and this is perhaps a longer term goal, I would like to see the Northern Line extended through north Battersea, further taking pressure off Clapham Junction.

    We should always encourage people to use public transport wherever possible – however, we also have to be mindful that, for some people, cars will be necessary and we need to make sure that people feel confident making environmentally friendly choices, such as using electric vehicles. Ultimately, as numerous polls show, people care deeply about the environment and I think we should trust them to make sensible environmental decisions rather than telling them what to do when we may not understand their circumstances.

    Housing is also a key concern here. Many of our readers worry about the proposals we keep seeing for giant new blocks of flats, way exceeding the rules in the Local Plan. However these projects justify their scale on the grounds that they also provide a proportion of affordable housing. Where do you think is the right balance between providing the social housing we need, and making sure that our urban environment remains one people want to live in? This is always a difficult issue for community politicians to navigate and the right balance will always depend on the specific circumstances in question. One of the things I care most about is making home ownership attainable and affordable and, for that to become a reality, we need to increase the supply of housing. Nevertheless, I can fully understand why people feel aggrieved when a development is proposed that feels out of kilter with their view of the area. Ultimately, politicians (whether MPs or councillors) are in a position to reflect the concerns of residents to developers and local authorities and work to find a way to build more housing (ideally through good design and more gentle density) in a way that residents feel comfortable with.

    We were one of the most anti-Brexit constituencies in the country, and it may have cost our previous Conservative MP Jane Ellison her seat. Have we moved on from that now? And where do we go from here? Well, I’ll start by saying that I think it’s been a huge shame for the area to lose Jane as a Member of Parliament. She was a fantastic local MP who worked very hard across a number of different communities and was always immensely responsive to her constituents.

    Brexit is obviously an issue that evokes strong feelings on both sides of the debate and there are some people for whom it remains the key issue. However, to be honest, this is not raised that often with me on the doorstep anymore and I think people have begun to move on. My hope is that, as a society, we focus more on the future of our relationship with allies in Europe (where we have done excellent work on Ukraine) and beyond rather than re-fight the Brexit debate. I believe this is already happening.

    As Brexit happened, there were two key issues locally that I was anxious to see resolved – getting settled status for our EU residents, and agreeing bilateral frameworks with the EU and elsewhere to maintain the competitiveness of London’s services sector. I am proud of the work that the Conservative Government has done on both these fronts. I am also especially proud of the work that the previous Conservative-led Wandsworth Council did in funding Citizens Advice Wandsworth to create a bespoke service to assist EU residents with their settlement status rights.

    Has the Conservative party fallen out of love with London in the last few years, with the talk all about ‘levelling up’ and focussing spending and priorities elsewhere? Why should Londoners still support the party? It is of course true that the Conservative Party has had a challenging few years in London, but I am hopeful that the tide will turn in the years ahead. We’ve already seen indications in some parts of the city that there is growing discontent with Labour rule and, here in Wandsworth, we gained a council seat off Labour in May. The main thing that drives me to be a Conservative is that it is the party of ambition, the party of business and the party that recognises that the best way to drive economic growth and improve society is by encouraging people to reach their full potential rather than stifling it through over-regulation and a statist attitude. I believe these values do still resonate in London.

    The situation in Gaza is a concern for many, especially in London. What do you think should be the next government’s position? Like many in Battersea, I’ve found the situation in Gaza and Israel extremely concerning. I also know that a number of Battersea residents are directly affected by the ongoing conflict there.

    This is a difficult and complicated situation to respond to. I believe the Government has taken the right stance on this. On the one hand, supporting Israel’s right to defend itself following a barbaric terrorist attack from Hamas. On the other, pushing to ensure that as much aid as possible can be delivered to the people of Gaza who have been so badly let down by Hamas dragging them into an unnecessary conflict. The ultimate goal must be a two-state solution, which has been the UK’s long-standing position.

    And finally – why should our readers vote for you? At this election there is a choice between a Labour-led Government and a Conservative-led Government. I know that the last few years have been a difficult time for many but – in spite of all these difficulties – I would urge people in Battersea to compare the two approaches on offer. I think Rishi Sunak has dealt well with a difficult situation and has the right priorities as Prime Minister. I do not believe that a Starmer Government has the right solutions for our country, and I think Labour’s proposals would be particularly bad for our area. Policies such as the introduction of VAT on private schools, the introduction of higher Council Tax bands (which could see bills skyrocket) and the introduction of capital gains tax liability on primary residences will have a particularly negative impact on constituents in Battersea.

    I am a proud Battersea resident and, if elected as your Member of Parliament, I will stand up to Sadiq Khan and the Labour Council in Wandsworth and fight your corner on the issues that affect your day to day lives.

    This is one of a series of interviews, where we aim to speak to all of the candidates for the Battersea constituency in the July 2024 general election, the others are here. Election day is Thursday 4th July, remember that this time you need to take Photo ID (with 22 acceptable forms of ID). You may also want to see Tom’s own website, (very active) twitter, and linkedin.

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      Meet Barry Edwards, the Reform UK candidate for Battersea

      Posted on June 22, 2024 by David

      Barry Edwards is the Reform UK candidate in the Battersea constituency for the 2024 General Election. We and our partners at Clapham Junction insider are inviting the all the election candidates to short interviews – so you can learn more about who they are, what they believe in, and their plans to improve Battersea and help its residents. Details of all the candidates, and the other interviews, are here.

      Could you introduce yourself to our readers? Hi, my name is Barry Edwards and I am a Management Consultant and Chartered Environmentalist.

      Tell us something about you our readers may not know… I am a BS EN ISO International Standards Lead Auditor, which means that I am a suitably qualified and experienced person to verify compliance within evidenced management systems

      On your bio, you say that you run a business in the borough. What makes the Battersea constituency special for you? I don’t run a business in Wandsworth Borough, but in its next-door neighbour the London Bough of Richmond upon Thames. What makes Battersea special for me is its relationship with the Thames Estuary, Battersea Park, Falcon Park, Heathbrook Park, Clapham Common and all the other wonderful small open spaces that make it such a Green constituency.

      In the 2016 EU referendum, 70% of our constituency voted to remain, one of the highest in the country. There are still strong feelings about Brexit. On your website, you pledge to “work with [people], learn from them and represent their views, aspirations and requirements”. What do you have to offer to Battersea constituents in this context? Now that we have secured our own sovereignty and Parliament has the final decision which decides the evolution of society, the environment and our economy, I am a sustainability expert with the training and expertise to ensure that these are balanced towards meeting the needs of Battersea, without compromising the needs of future generations. It was really a shame that there was so much propaganda on both sides and people unfortunately came to believed that the EU could make better decisions about the UK’s national interest than we could.

      The cost of living is a real worry for many of our readers. Since Labour took control in 2022, the Council has implemented the London Living Wage for its staff and contractors. Do you think it was the right move and what do you think is the best approach for the government to provide support? I think that the London Living Wage is substantially short of what is sustainable. London is a very expensive place to live, with house prices and rents increasing year on year. Reform will raise the personal tax allowance to £20,000 per annum, lifting huge numbers of young people, pensioners, and people on low incomes, in fact, taking 41% of Londoners out of being taxed altogether.

      Reform will re-evaluate the living wage so that it is a realistic figure, in line with the real cost of living in the capital. Reform will reduce the competition for employment, therefore increasing the value of work, increasing wages for most people in Battersea.

      With the busiest station at the heart of Battersea, public transport is used by the vast majority of people in the area. What would you like to see improved for that in Battersea? I would like to see TfL have improved standards and that these are measured against accountable criteria. This is an essential and, in some cases, critical means of transportation and over the years standards have been falling and prices have been increasing.

      We need a railway, tube and bus services that are clean, safe, at the appropriate frequency and on time. This has been sadly lacking and the leadership and management of this service, has simply not been there. Reform would do a full assessment and put in place, if necessary, an Act of Parliament to ensure these standards are met going forward.

      Housing is also a local concern. Recently we have seen some proposals for huge tower blocks exceeding ‘local plan’ rules – which justify their scale on the grounds that they also include a share of affordable housing. Where is the right balance between providing the social housing we need, and making sure that our urban environment remains one people want to live in? The correct balance of society, environment and economics is to meet the needs of today, without compromising the needs of future generations. That balance can only be set by ensure that we use “air-space development” to meet the serge of demand force by increasing population and then move to a sensible protection of the critical spaces such and farmland, open-spaces and National parks, to ensure food security and biodiversity.

      Air-space development is a process which build on existing properties to provide additional accommodation. If homeowners were allowed to develop above their existing homes, an extra storey, there would not be a housing shortage, or the need to build any more new houses. The homeowners could decide if this was right for them, their properties would go up in value and they could get a rent for these developments. This would be affordable reducing rent and young people would have somewhere to live without harming the environment.

      You cannot just keep building houses, you will start to build on Green Belt, farmland, and our Parks, so this essential land uses should have Legislative protection, to guarantee food security. This would put family first, as the children of the property owner could then prioritise their own children to have a place of their own, or rent out the additional flat. This would also reduce social care as the children would be nearby if case of emergency and any other properties could offer this as rented accommodation.

      You have a special interest in environmental issues and have said, “people should be on the side of the planet that provides all the things we need.” What are the most important measures the future government should commit to in order to address the climate emergency? I wish everyone when they consider the future to make one simple calculation. It is all based on mathematics and the arithmetic is not that difficult. If you have a steady growing thing, of any type and a recognised rate over at finite period, say 1% per year, this would cause the item to double in size. This is called the doubling time. We are taking about ordinary steady growth. If you apply this to population, then a population growing at 1.4% per year would double in 60 years. This is what Battersea has to look forward to as it is growing at that rate.

      If this is allowed to continue, then not only the population, but all services including the NHS, schools, housing sewage treatment water supply, energy and tolerance would all have to double to simply keep pace. If these support services did not increase then the level of service would halve. But you say the pie could grow in size, so everything doesn’t have to be shared. However, using current verified projection the economy is flat Zero % growth, yet the population is still growing at 1.4%. and even if the economy could grow at that rate, the only place where this huge need of extra space could come from would be to build on our parks.

      Therefore, the single most dangerous thing to our prosperity is more people – More is Poor. This massive increase the population also affects the climate emergency because anthropomorphic climate change is caused by people and their consumption behaviours, and the more people the more carbon footprint, so More is also Climate Change. This might be poorly expressed as the immigration election, but as the only way that this population growth in the UK is growing is through immigration, therefore Over-Population is Immigration, so despite this awkwardness in terminology, it is absolutely accurate.

      The situation in Gaza is a concern for many voters, and specifically in London where many have a strong view. As a former journalist with exposure in the Middle East, you have also a specific experience. What do you think should be the government’s position? I have not been a journalist in the Middle East, but fully understand the situation and consequences of the Hamas War. The Governments position should be that it is entirely correct that Israel should be able to defend itself. What would we do in the UK, if the country was attacked 1200 people were killed and over 200 hostages were taken? We would defend ourselves, but what if the perpetrators were a recognised terrorist organisation that stated that it would do it again and would not be satisfied until our nation was destroyed? This would pose an existential threat to our entire way of life, this is the only way to see this conflict in Israel and act accordingly.

      Israel is an ally and we must ensure democracy, the rule of law, individuality, tolerance and the respect for other faiths is maintained. Therefore, antisemitic behaviour should not be tolerated, all terrorist organisations should not be allowed to win and peace and mutual respect for both communities and cultures should be helped to return as soon as possible. However, this can only be achieved through the hostages being returned and the support for terrorists to be discouraged.

      And finally – why should our readers vote for you? Because Labour was in power for 14 years and crashed the economy, then the Tories did the exact same. LibDems have worked with both Labour and Tory and nothing got any better. As a professional Environmentalist I can state expertly that the Greens don’t understand sustainability and the SNP and Plaid Cymru are both raving Nationalist who shouldn’t be allowed to be in control of anything.

      Given these fact the only reasonable therefore rational choice is to choose something else. None of the above. It just so happens that that change is Reform and this is not he short straw, it is the best straw as Reform has common sense and will balance society, environment and economics to find the good life for everyone no matter their nationality or culture. Britain needs Reform, Battersea needs Reform, as this will lead to a more sensible, realistic, sustainable Life for All.

      You may also want to see Barry’s own website, which is here. This is one of a series of interviews, where we aim to speak to all of the candidates for the Battersea constituency in the July 2024 general election, the others are here. Election day is Thursday 4th July, remember that this time you need to take Photo ID (with 22 acceptable forms of ID).

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      Meet Joe Taylor, the Green Party candidate for Battersea

      Posted on June 22, 2024 by David

      Joe Taylor is the Green Party candidate in the Battersea constituency for the 2024 General Election. We and our partners at Clapham Junction insider are inviting the candidates to short interviews – so you can learn more about who they are, what they believe in, and their plans to improve Battersea and help its residents. Details of all the candidates, and the other interviews, are here.

      Could you introduce yourself to our readers? My family and I have lived in Battersea for six years and we love it here. Since my daughter was born nine years ago, I’ve spent as much time as I can trying to stop climate breakdown to give her and all young people a viable future. That’s why I’m running in the general election for the Green Party – the only party that takes the climate crisis seriously.

      Tell us something about you our readers may not know… My day job is in the music industry, managing songwriters who mostly write songs for big DJs.

      We hear you co-managed the British entry for Eurovision a good few years ago. What lessons would you draw from that experience that you would use as an MP? I didn’t expect to be reminded of Eurovision during this election campaign but my first hustings was at South Thames College (in our neighbouring Putney constituency) and my encounter with the Workers Party candidate did remind me somewhat of my encounter with Lordi, the hard rock band in monster costumes who won Eurovision for Finland in 2006, as I explained in this Twitter thread.

      What do you think of Wandsworth Council’s efforts so far to ‘go green’ – which has seen a decent push for electric vehicles, more comprehensive recycling, and cycling? Wandsworth Council declared a climate emergency in 2019 but nothing that either administration, Conservative or Labour, have done since suggests they understand what “emergency” means. Everything we hold dear is under threat, not on some distant timescale but in the lifetimes of most people alive today. We need a World War II-sized mobilisation to change almost every aspect of life in Battersea and Wandsworth as well as the UK as a whole. I campaigned for food waste collection and now we have food waste collection, but it’s a tiny step when the challenge facing us is so huge.

      With the busiest station at the heart of Battersea, public transport is used by the vast majority of people in the area. What would you like to see improved for that in Battersea? The truth is we need to see every urban area including Battersea becoming pretty much car-free this decade. So we’re going to need more public transport and for it to be cheaper, and more pedestrianisation and provision for active travel also.

      Housing is also a local concern. Recently we have seen some proposals for huge tower blocks exceeding ‘local plan’ rules – which justify their scale on the grounds that they also include a share of affordable housing. Where is the right balance between providing the social housing we need, and making sure that our urban environment remains one people want to live in? The Green Party is pledging to provide 150,000 new social homes each year, some of them new builds. All new builds will be built to Passivhaus standards or similar, meaning they will require minimal heating and cooling. The fact that it’s still legal in 2024 to build houses with poor insulation and gas boilers – which will soon have to be ripped out – shows how reckless our current government is, and how little regard they have for the future. How dare they call themselves conservatives? In general, I think our focus should be on making better use of the buildings we’ve got by retrofitting them (something the Green Party is very serious about) and making sure they are permanently occupied.

      In the 2016 EU referendum there was a 70 % remain vote here, one of the highest in the country. There is still a lot of strong feeling about Brexit – but how relevant is it as an issue in this election? The Green Party is in favour of rejoining the EU, rejoining the customs union, and restoring free movement. Sounds good to me as long we can keep a laser focus on avoiding climate breakdown.

      The situation in Gaza is a concern for many voters, and specifically in London where many have a strong view. What do you think should be the government’s position? The Green Party would end UK military co-operation with Israel, reinstate funding for a UN agency for Palestinian refugees, and support international investigations into war crimes allegations. We will continue to push for a ceasefire, the release of hostages and a long-term settlement to bring security to both sides. In general, the Green Party is a voice for peace and for disarmament. Shockingly, it is often the lone voice in English politics advocating for these things which every human being should be working towards.

      The environment has become a bit of a political football, getting tangled in arguments about onshore wind farms and even wokeness. What would you do as an MP to keep people focussed on the facts, and avoid it becoming a point of division where everything gets bogged down in politics and nothing gets done? The first thing we need is for political leaders to stand up and be honest about the scale of threat facing us. Then we need a Churchillian response – the whole of global society must unite to survive, but if some countries won’t do their bit, then we must do more, not less.

      You have built a lot of your campaign around climate change. In a time of financial pressure and global tension – why should voters focus on this above all else? Because otherwise we’re going to lose everything we hold dear.

      The Green party is sometimes seen as a bit of a single-issue party, maybe someone you would vote for to make a point but not someone you would trust to run the country. Is this fair? I actually think the party should be even more focused on climate and nature than it is currently. The Green Party’s target for this election is to win four MPs, not to run the country just yet sadly.

      And finally – why should our readers vote for you? Vote Green for a liveable future and a kinder, fairer world where we look after each other and live in harmony with nature. But even more importantly, come and get involved in the new Battersea People’s Assembly, which will take place at Battersea Arts Centre on Sunday July 7th at 2.30pm. It’s time for us, the people of Battersea, to come together, get to know each other, organise and prepare for the challenges ahead. If you elect me as your MP, I will work to bring about the decisions of the assembly.

      This is one of a series of interviews, where we aim to speak to all of the candidates for the Battersea constituency in the July 2024 general election, the others are here. Election day is Thursday 4th July, remember that this time you need to take Photo ID (with 22 acceptable forms of ID).

      You may also want to see Joe’s very active twitter & party website. His crowdfunder appeal is below –

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      Like a cat: Clapham Common’s most historic house escapes demolition yet again!

      Posted on June 21, 2024 by David

      A few months ago we wrote about a rather unique house, hidden away between the big Victorian houses along the north side of Clapham Common. 64 Clapham Common Northside is much smaller and simpler building than its neighbours. It also looks very forgotten, with boarded-up windows, a neglected garden, and a hole in the roof.

      This small house was built in the 1780s, and belonged to John Cunningham (whose son, also called John, was the Curate for Clapham, and later became the Vicar of Harrow). This was a time when Lavender Hill was a country track winding its way through the fields, on a hill overlooking the Thames valley, and Clapham Common was mainly used for grazing animals. However change was on the way, as wealthy folk started to build big luxurious houses with extensive gardens, making the most of the omnibus services that started to reach all the way out here from London. Many of these early houses clustered around the edges of Clapham Common, and a few along Lavender Hill (including Rush Hill House we’ve written a more detailed article on).

      John followed the example of his new neighbours, and built his own big country house, called Northside, which was was finished in 1811. Unfortunately he within a year of the work finishing, so didn’t really get to enjoy his new house! Maybe because he needed somewhere to live during the building works, the original 1780s cottage escaped being demolished, but instead got incorporated into the new house at its eastern end, as a kitchen and servants’ wing – as shown below.

      The new house, shown above, went through a few owners, and later had a substantial extension, as well as a ‘Swiss chalet’ being built in the grounds. It was quite an interesting property, with a complicated layout including a Gothic hall and a dining room with a coved ceiling, and large gardens including stables. It kept being well cared for, with full redecoration in the mid-1800s – but in the 1870s the railway arrived at Clapham Junction, closely followed by enormous levels of dense residential development, as well as all manner of industrial projects – and nothing would ever be quite the same again.

      As we saw with our detailed history of Rush Hill House a bit to the north, the last few big country houses were increasingly at odds with the sounds, smells and general urban feel of their new industrial and residential neighbours. People who could afford a big house like Northside would now choose somewhere much further away from the city, and the land these big old buildings sat on was increasingly worth more than the houses themselves. Northside put up a good fight, staying put all the way to the 1890s – but the end was inevitable, and it was put up for auction, and quickly demolished, to be replaced by the network of streets we know today.

      Or mostly demolished. Because one small bit of Northside, the original two-storey cottage (the one that had been incorporated in to it as a servants’ quarters and dairy) was saved from demolition, for the second time! It became a small house, much as it had been before Northside was built, and got sandwiched between a pair of new Victorian terraced buildings around the Common. And well over a century later, it’s still standing – now known as 64 Clapham Common Northside. It’s the one peeking out behind the big weeping willow tree in our photo above. Numbers 65–79, the red brick terrace to the left, replaced the main house, but are still attached to the two storey cottage.

      It’s a building that is familiar to many people who lived here in the 1980s and 1990s, as for many years No.63 right next door was the local doctors’ surgery – for much of that time run by Dr Dunwoody, who had also been MP for Falmouth and Camborne in the late 1960s, and Minister of Health, as well as an early crusader against smoking as the first director of the Ash group (‘Action on Smoking and Health’). He later moved the practice to the brand-new Stormont Road Health Centre on the ground floor of what’s now Antrim House.

      In 1987 and 1988 the house had two more brushes with demolition, with a couple of planning applications proposing major reworking of the building, adding extensions galore and an extra floor, and turning it in to a five bedroom house. Both were refused on the grounds that extra floors would be an insensitive change out of character with the existing building, and that some of the changes would be insensitive to the adjacent conservation area. The owners at the time appealed against the second rejection, and lost.

      At some point after that the house seems to have been abandoned – and left empty for over a decade. It’s in a sorry state now, and no longer habitable. But there’s bene a burst of recent activity as the house seemingly changed hands, and was put up for sale by Fresh Aspects Property, for offers north of a million pounds. It was billed as a potential refurbishment project – or alternatively as an opportunity to build a new home, and to help pave the way for buyers to the sellers applied for planning permission to demolish the building and create a larger replacement building, echoing the form of the existing house but with more windows, a balcony and an additional storey.

      After escaping demolition in 1810, 1895, and 1988 – would this be the end for Clapham Common’s original cottage? Well, it turned out that this lowly cottage had a lot of friends in high places, and the planning application gathered a variety of objections from neighbours, as well as detailed correspondence from the Battersea Society, the Clapham Society, the Georgian Society, The London and Middlesex Archaeological Society, and The Council for British Archaeology.

      The Clapham Society noted that after losing the late-1980s planning appeal the previous owners had left it to decay for a decades, despite the fact that an 18th century cottage in a prime position overlooking Clapham Common could achieve a good rental income – and the strange abandonment could have meant a loss in rent of over a million pounds, and leaving it empty in a housing crisis made it worse. The architect of the latest rebuilding proposal had evidently struggled to justify the replacement of the original house with a taller ‘pastiche’ replacement in their heritage statement, which had included the bizarre argument that knocking down the building and rebuilding something else “will contribute far more to its conservation than any attempt at renovation“; this was dismissed as ‘complete nonsense’. The Battersea Society had similar views – also commenting that it was deplorable also that no action had been taken on the proposal made in 1988 that the building should be locally listed, and suggested that this should be remedied in the next review of local listings.

      The Georgian Society , who specialise in the protection of Georgian historic buildings, weighed in with serious concerns – noting that demolition would create significant harm to the building that had some historic significance, and that the loss of the building would also cause some harm to the conservation area. They noted there was work underway to list the building, and that failing that it should be locally listed, and were concerned about the lack of information provided int he proposals on the historic fabric of the building that was still present. The London and Middlesex Archaeological Society noted that the house is a unique survival of the former built environment within the Clapham Common Conservation Area from the late 18th century, and should be preserved.

      The Council for British Archaeology also opposed the demolition. In a strongly argued submission they noted that the modest scale of the building, its legibly historic character, and the phases of its evolution over time, illustrate the history of the development of the area and contribute to the character and appearance of the Conservation Area (which essentially covers the buildings along the side of the Common – No. 64 is in it, as shown in red in the map below). They noted that the rural and pre-nineteenth-century origins of Clapham Common were later largely hidden by nineteenth century development, and that the fact so little of that phase of the area’s development had survived gave this surviving cottage (which had also been a dairy, when there were still cows around!) particularly high historic value.

      They described the Heritage Statement supplied alongside the application to demolish the building as “entirely inadequate”, strongly disagreeing with any suggestion that the lack of uniformity of No. 64 with neighbouring buildings as something that needed to be improved – pointing out that the different scale and style of 64 Clapham Common Northside was precisely what made it so important, and that this was key to the building’s historical value. This would be totally lost if the building was demolished and replaced with a pastiche copy of the later buildings in the area. They were especially concerned with the argument put forward in the Heritage Statement that the building’s demolition and replacement ‘would contribute far more to its conservation than any attempt at renovation’, saying that this “demonstrated a total lack of understanding of the significance of the scale, surviving historic fabric, and modest character of the historic building.” Its demolition would cause substantial harm to the historic building, which was the opposite of conservation. This was a damning objection letter, arguing that the application was wildly inconsistent with the requirements for a historic property in a Conservation Area.

      This was a robust set of objections; we’ve reported on local development proposals for some years and we’ve rarely seen quite such a full house of comments along the lines of “you must be joking!”. But maybe the final nail in the coffin for these plans came from the Wandsworth Conservation and Heritage Advisory Committee, which met and discussed the case in some detail, and apparently unanimously objected to the demolition proposal, saying it was was unacceptable and entirely out of keeping with its surroundings. They noted that after the 1980s appeal was thrown out, English Heritage (now Historic England) had asked if the asset was wished to be listed, which was declined. There had also been a recommendation in 1988 that the asset should be locally listed. They noted that the house had remained empty for approximately 35 years, and thought it was ‘both shocking and bizarre’ that the property had been left in this state. Having confirmed that this was indeed an original Georgian building, and one that had remained remarkably close to its original condition, the committee felt was felt extraordinary that the property had not been Grade II listed in the way other similar buildings and structures had: it was “a rare case type”, as almost all of the other Georgian buildings had been lost across London.

      By the time the planning officers got to the case, the conclusion was looking hard to argue with. And sure enough – permission to demolish and rebuild was refused. In their impressively comprehensive report on the case, they noted that the existing property makes a positive contribution to the character and appearance of the Clapham Common Conservation Area, and that the application had failed to clearly or convincingly demonstrate that the demolition was necessary to achieve public benefits that outweigh the harm from its loss. They also noted that because of its scale, siting and design, the proposed replacement building would appear incongruous, unsympathetic and visually intrusive, which would negatively affect the character and appearance of the Clapham Common Conservation area. It would also result in harm to neighbouring amenities in terms of increased overlooking, increased sense of enclosure and overbearing, loss of outlook, loss of privacy, and loss of daylight/sunlight. And that wasn’t all – the application had also failed to demonstrate how the new development could be done in a way consistent with the Council’s zero-carbon target. They also disagreed with the proposals to replace the current front garden wall with a much higher one going up to 2.3 metres: “front gardens and their boundaries are as much part of the public realm as the street and the common and that boundaries should not be so high as to obscure the building behind“.

      Interestingly, the planning officers commented that the house was of considerable age and interest, and its poor condition did not undermine its historic interest. Noting it had been left empty for decades, they pointed out a note in current planning rules that says where there is evidence of deliberate neglect of, or damage to, a heritage asset, the deteriorated state of the heritage asset should not be taken into account in any decision – i.e. saying the building had ‘fallen in to disrepair’ was not an argument for demolition.

      So the house has, yet again, survived! Like a cat, it somehow manages to defy death and keep going – but it has definitely cashed in a fair few of its nine lives by now, and after years of dereliction it’s already on the road to ruin, and it’s obviously not just going to stay as it is. So where do we go from here? Well the good news is that after a few decades of mouldering away, the building is in the hands of an active developer who’s clearly looking to do something with it. That ‘something’ is now unlikely to involve knocking it down, but it will likely include changes to extend it at the back, refurbish it to current standards, and generally address the sorts of issues you get when a house sits empty for decades with a hole in the roof. It’s an excellent location for a house, and there’s plenty of scope to turn it in to a real asset to its future owner as well as to Clapham Common. Local firm Fresh Aspects have successfully got several other ‘complicated’ buildings in the area back in to use, as we reported when we last wrote about this house, and there’s decent margin in refurbishing it or selling it on for someone to do as a project.

      If this sounds like the project house for you – you’ll want to contact Fresh Aspects! If this was interesting you may also want to see our wider articles on local history, or on planning and development in the Lavender Hill area.

      Posted in Clapham Common, Housing, Local history, Planning | 2 Comments

      Plans are in for five new flats on Gideon Road, behind The Crown on Lavender Hill

      Posted on June 12, 2024 by David

      Back in 2019, we reported on plans to build a bundle of new Council-owned housing and flats – mostly on bits of car parking in the Gideon Road Estate just north of Lavender hill. These were quite ambitious plans, and a rare example of new-build Council housing – partly designed to accommodate people moved out of the Winstanley Estate as it was redeveloped, and partly designed to provide the sort of accommodation that’s quite rare in the Borough, like wheelchair-accessible flats or flats with the space to accommodate large families needing many bedrooms. The plans were split in to three phases, the first of which was for lots of houses and flats at the western end of Gideon Road, which have now been built – one of them’s pictured below and we’ve published lots more photos here.

      The second part of the development involved building a small building behind The Crown pub – on space that is currently part of the Gideon Road Estate car park, with a set of concrete-and-asbestos garages that had been available to rent. The plans for this small building have evolved over the last five years – at first it was going to be a block of three flats and a separate freestanding house, but then the whole project picked up long delays, not helped by everything grinding to a halt for a while during the Pandemic. Wandswoth has new revived this bit of the project, changed the plans, and there’s a chance for you to comment on them.

      The Council now proposes a single building with five flats. Two of them are on the ground floor – a one-bed flat, and a large four-bed flat, both with small private gardens, and provision for two street trees to be added to make the car parking area a bit less of a concrete wasteland. There are then three two-storey flats on the first and second floor (a one-bed, a two-bed and a three-bed), each with internal staircase and a private balcony. This is a substantially larger build than what was initially envisaged for the site, hence why there are now five properties rather than four (and larger properties too, with a total of 11 bedrooms rather than 7) – but it’s fair to say it is also a clever approach, solving quite a few issues that had become apparent with the previous design.

      The original plans created a small, dark and hidden away garden for one of the ground floor flats, next to the staircase leading down from Tipthorpe Road, which was clearly never going to work for plants, and which was so tucked away that it had the feel of being a burglar’s hideaway in the making. The original plan also broke up the estate car parking provision, with two of the existing open-air spaces visible on the right on the photo below replaced by a bin shed and moved to a spot hidden away in the same corner – creating the sort of place a car break in would be a racing certainty. These have been done away with in the final design.

      One of the most ingenious and – on reflection – maybe obvious changes, is that the new building uses the difference in height between Tipthorpe Road and Gideon Road to have two level step-free entrances, with the two lower-level flats accessed from the Gideon Road car park, and the three upper flats accessed via a short corridor from a front entrance at the end of Tipthorpe Road (shown in grey at the top left of the first floor floorplan below). By doing this, it provides a ‘ground floor’ access to every flat without needing either an expensive and fault-prone lift or a shared internal staircase.

      The three upper flats are all duplex (two-floor) ones, with internal staircases, but generous living spaces at the entrance level. They’re nicely designed properties with lots of living space and light, and in an unusual but welcome move, the flats include small rooms for storage, about the size of a large airing cupboard. These used to come as standard in 1970s Council accommodation but are very rare in an age where every square foot gets costed out and chopped to the bare minimum by property developers. The flats will have heat pumps for heating, as well as solar panels on the roof.

      The entrance on to Tipthorpe Road will create a clearer ‘end’ to the road, shown above – with the existing staircase down to the car park set to be rebuilt to a slightly wider width and with a longer middle landing – ensuring the staircase isn’t all hidden away behind the building, but also creating a handy space underneath for the sprinkler tanks and electrical supply for the building. The existing ramp running from Tipthorpe Road towards the rest of the estate and the playground is also set to be retained, albeit in a slightly more tucked away form running between two buildings rather than as the current wide open balcony arrangement (but is likely to be closed for quite some time during the building works – as we saw with the first phase of the new development on the estate where the flats facing the works had to put up with narrow temporary walkways with poor visibility round the corners, that felt rather unsafe at night, for several years).

      By and large, this is a decently thought through development that has clearly had some time and effort spent on it, and which is creating five impressively good quality Council-owned flats in a bit of the Gideon Road estate that’s not particularly lovely at the moment. By turning a neglected corner in to new homes – and homes that look set to be fairly smartly presented and well integrated to the layout of the wider estate – these plans seem unlikely to be especially controversial.

      That said – there’s no getting away from the fact that this is quite a large building to be adding on an already dense estate, and its immediate neighbours – especially the flat at the back of 100 Lavender Hill, and the next door terrace at No.17 Pountney Road, are likely to find their views are more enclosed; there’s also understandable concern from neighbours that this is creating a fairly narrow alleyway and a more hidden away staircase in an area that already has some problems with dubious characters lurking around in the evening! Parking will likely also be a concern, given that the development is for five flats, including a specially designed wheelchair-accessible flat, with no associated parking at all. This is realistically likely to mean the loss of at least one of the adjacent estate’s existing parking spaces to become a dedicated disabled space (which comes on top of the loss of the 11 garages being removed at this site and the 35 garages that were recently demolished to make way for the linked Gideon Road development), adding to the pressure for car parking in a spot where it’s already difficult.

      To see the details, or comment on the plans, search for planning application 2024/1212 on the Wandsworth planning website. It’s unlikely to be especially controversial; at the time of writing three objections have been made – noting concerns that parking spaces are being lost, that the flats will turn an open walkway in to a narrow overshadowed alleyway, and that a new building with 16 residents will create overlooking concerns for neighbouring flats and balconies. The window for comments notionally closed on the 30th May, but in practice the Council will consider comments after this date as far as possible.

      In the meantime, presumably recognising the disturbance Gideon Road’s residents have already seen as an extended building project has run in and around the estate for several years, funding was found and work has recently completed to improve the general landscaping of the wider estate – which has significantly improved the green spaces in the estate (our separate post here has more details on that project). There’s still a third phase of the development to follow after this one, which will fill in the ‘corners’ of Tyneham Close – we’ll report on that in a future article.

      If you found this of interest, you may want to see our wider articles on local environment, planning and housing issues. To receive updates sign up here. And if you have any news on these developments do let us know!

      Posted in Environment, Housing, Planning | 2 Comments

      As Lavender Hill’s colony of Lime bikes grows, and with scooters set to join the party too: can Wandsworth bring order to the chaos?

      Posted on June 10, 2024 by David

      Wandsworth has a complicated relationship with cycle hire schemes! Lots of residents don’t own cars, and we’re close to the centre of London – which means it’s a Borough where a lot of people cycle. Maybe because of this, the Council is pretty supportive of cycling – and has strongly supported TfL’s Santander Cycles. They got enthusiastically involved from the start to get most of the north of the Borough included – which is why there was quite a notable stretch on the initial coverage area to include Wandsworth town centre! They’ve kept going since then: Lavender Hill itself used to be the very edge of the scheme coverage, but in 2014 Wandsworth blagged a small extension with three docking stations to cover Clapham Common Northside and Northcote Road, and last year another one meant the scheme reaching Clapham South. As we reported in 2019 Lambeth did a similar deal to add one at the south end of Cedars Road, giving the Lavender Hill area comprehensive coverage. We’ve also seen a big rollout of cycle lockups, a more continuous cycle lane along Lavender Hill, and improvements to some of the dodgier roads & junctions.

      When it comes to ‘dockless’ cycle hire schemes, the relationship has been rather trickier. These schemes have had a messy life so far – starting with an explosion of chaotic and badly designed schemes in 2017 (backed by oodles of Chinese-led investment, almost all of which went up in smoke). They became quite a headache for Councils: in the initial stage where a dozen or so operators were competing with not-very-secure bike schemes cycles where being left all over the place, and costing money to rescue. Wandsworth weren’t happy at the way these schemes just appeared out of the backs of lorries in the dead of night: back in 2017 we reported that they’d seized 130 Obikes, on the grounds that they’d been dumped all over the Borough without any advance warning or consultation and were causing problems at the stations. As the FT noted at the time –

      [Obike] has said it is “disappointed” after Wandsworth council seized more than 130 of its cycles and described them as a “yellow bike plague”  […]  Wandsworth council said it had started removing the bikes since they first started appearing last month, saying that “masses” of the bikes were found outside Clapham Junction train station, causing problems for pedestrians and especially for people in wheelchairs and parents with buggies.

      Things did calm down a bit, as most of the dockless cycle operators vanished, leaving a handful of more established and organised operators mainly focussed on electric bikes – most notably Lime, who are now turning a decent profit. But the issue of bikes left all over the pace continues to be a headache for Councils trying to keep their pavements accessible to all residents and free of clutter. In 2022, Council leader Simon Hogg told Lime boss Wayne Ting that a fresh round of seizing bikes (and charging for their return) would kick off unless the firm did more to clamp down “unacceptable obstructions” to Wandsworth’s roads and pavements, following what he described as a flood of complaints from residents. The BBC News article featured St John’s Road with bikes all over it! Lime themselves also started to call for designated parking areas to be created, suggesting 10,000 dedicated e-bike parking spaces were needed across London.

      Hire bikes are widely used and have become part of London’s transport arrangements, so some sort of middle ground was clearly going to be needed, between ongoing chaos of bikes littered everywhere, and attempts to seize them and get them off the streets. Wandsworth therefore started working with Lime to try and bring some order – while continuing to seize bundles of particularly badly parked bikes, presumably as a way of keeping the pressure up on the cycle scheme operators to make progress. Lime started sending teams out to sort out particularly messy assortments of bikes, as well as restricting parking in parts of the Borough, to prevent journeys being finished in particularly crowded or awkward areas. This didn’t help much at first – mainly because Lime’s bikes were too easy to hack and ride without paying; the familiar ticking of jump-started bikes was one of the sounds of last summer and with no incentive for the typically rather dubious crowd riding them to park them in a sensible way these bikes continued to be dumped all over the place. However it is now starting to work, mainly thanks to hardware tweaks on the bikes that have made it a lot harder to ride the bikes without properly unlocking them!

      This has had a particularly striking effect on Beauchamp Road, on the corner of Lavender Hill next to the Thermomix shop. It’s become a designated Clapham Junction parking area for Lime bikes – and has been swamped by a huge sea of Lime!

      It’s shown that the cycles can be geo-restricted to some extent, and it’s created a more organised parking area than what we saw before, in a spot with a relatively wide pavement that provides space for them without blocking the path. However this doesn’t really feel like the long term solution either – and residents of Beauchamp Road are probably relieved to hear that more improvements are probably on the way. In March, Wandsworth consulted on plans to designate 141 locations around the Borough as cycle hire parking areas, with a view to focussing dropoff and pickup on these sites, and create some space on the road (rather than pavements) specifically for these cycles – which ought to keep the pavements clear at the Beauchamp Road junction. The map below shows the proposed locations – including the spot photographed above, but also a variety of spots just off the main roads round Clapham Junction, and a few locations along Lavender Hill, Queenstown Road & Clapham Common Northside.

      The locations will also, on a trial basis, be open for e-scooter hire schemes. These have had a much slower growth in London than cycle hire schemes, which may reflect how much harder it is to run a scooter hire scheme than a cycle scheme. Believe it or not, while anyone can ride a bike or run a cycle ire scheme, privately-owned e-scooters remain illegal to use on London’s roads. Even though they’re out there everywhere! However there’s been a low-profile trial of hire scooters underway for the last five years, subject to quite strict rules on coverage, speed and parking. Voi is one of the firms involved, but recently confirmed it is on the brink of abandoning its current London trial of 1,700 scooters from London (and maybe going in to the cycle hire business instead) – a decision it blames partly on a lack of dedicated parking areas, but mostly on the fact that only nine out of London’s 33 Boroughs have allowed its scooters to be used at all – rather limiting their appeal and the viability of s scooter hire business. It’s not quite as bad as Paris – where a referendum led to hire scooters being completely banned – but the lack of coverage of the trials has made it rather hard to tell if scooters could properly work in London.

      Wandsworth was not one of those nine scooter-friendly Boroughs – but alongside the proposal on creating proper parking spaces, it has confirmed that it will now join in with the next part of the London e-scooter rental trial, which should see an expansion in the number of scooters in the Borough from Lime, Dott and Voi, and open up some new commute options to inner London (where most of the other Boroughs already allow rental scooters as part of the same programme).

      All in all, the plans to create a proper set of parking spaces, and join in to the small scooter trial, looks like a reasonable proposal. It will lead to some parking bays being converted to drop off / pick up areas for cycle hire schemes, which is never controversy-free. However similar efforts to dedicate spaces to electric vehicle charging, cycle hangars, car-hire schemes, and motorcycles, have been reasonably easily accommodated, and the proposal seems proportionate given the sheer volume of cycle hire use now on our streets. A similar approach is already up & running in several other Boroughs – an example in Westminster is shown above – and it seems to have worked fairly well so far. We’ll keep you posted on any new developments in the area, and if (as seems likely) the Council goes ahead with these plans, we’d be interested in your experience with the new approach.

      This is part of an occasional series of posts on transport matters in the Lavender Hill area, in Battersea, London. To receive updates by e-mail, sign up for free here.

      Posted in Street by street, Transport | 1 Comment

      In pictures: Clapham Junction’s impressive new Italian deli and cafe, Prezzemolo & Vitale

      Posted on May 14, 2024 by David

      Prezzemolo & Vitale is the latest business to open in what used to be Debenhams’ beauty section at Clapham Junction – and brings a proper emporium of all things Italian – including a wide selection of cheese, meat and charcuterie, drinks, fruit and veg, and bakery produce. There’s also a cafe selling Morettino’s coffee and equipped with a generous supply of Sicilian specialties including Cassata, Cannoli and organic cakes, as well as a food-to-go offer including sandwiches, salads, cold cuts and cheeses, to eat in at the cafe or take away.

      Official opening was Monday, though a soft launch on Saturday allowed us all in for a sneak peek. Stock was still being loaded in and finishing touches were still being made, but even before things were fully complete there was no doubt that they have delivered an impressive product here, bright and smartly fitted out – quite a change from the rather tired look the premises had been taking in the later years as a department store. They have made the most of the new windows – which (as we reported two years ago) involved some substantial engineering work to remove the 1960s canopy over the pavement and recreate the bright Victorian high-ceilinged space.

      There’s plenty of room for indoor seating by the big windows, as well as a few outside tables. The original ceilings that go back to the first use of the space as Arding & Hobbs have been restored – including the careful plaster ornaments on the ceiling beams. The curiously-not-quite-flat floors that previously seemed to permeate a lot of the space in the Debenhams years have also finally been levelled out!

      This is a fine foods delicatessen, coupled with a cafe – strongly (but not exclusively) focussed on Italian produce, and all displayed to a high standard. It’s clearly backed by a heavyweight supply chain effort behind the scenes, which means that there’s a lot of distinctly Italian produce here that you won’t find anywhere else.

      The owners are Giusi Vitale and Giuseppe Prezzemolo, ‘a couple in life and work’, who are unashamedly foodies. Their aim is to combine the variety speed and convenience of a high street supermarket, with a selection of food and wine of much higher quality, and close roots to its production. There’s an assortment of baked goods, some niche high-end products, and also a more mainstream selection of Italian brands that everyone will recognise.

      The centre of the store is dominated by a large and colourful assortment of fruit and vegetables – they bring a new consignment in from Italy at least every week. They import some of the most unusual and characteristic products, such as unusual Marsala black tomatoes or very-rare Vanilla-tasting Ribera oranges, straight from Sicily.

      Towards the back is, of course, a wide mix of pasta, sauces and and olive oils – with a mix of well regarded Italian brands including Alce Nero, Rummo, Campisi & Barbera.

      A maybe more unusual find is the fairly extensive selection of Prezzemolo & Vitale’s own brand of Italian ice cream – including Gianduja, Fior di Panna, and Tiramisu.

      There’s a selection of drinks including a wide range of soft drinks and lemonades (including our personal favourite, Chinotto, whose presence in any business is is a sure sign of Italian influence behind the scenes!) – as well as a mix of both well-known Italian and international wines, and smaller more exclusive ones created by small Italian producers.

      The owners take a lot of pride in their fresh bread, which is locally made in London by a baker who developed his trade in Altamura – a town near Bari whose knotted rural-style bread is widely revered in Italy as the best bread in the business, and which has protected-origin status. They expect to sell a lot of classic sweet Sicilian pastries (many prepared at Prezzemolo’s Wimbledon base) to take away as well as to have in the cafe; though the offer isn’t wholly Italian – there’s also a decent range of French patisseries and more classic English cakes.

      One thing you can’t miss is that this is a business very firmly rooted in Sicily! The business was born soon after Giusi and Giuseppe first met in 1982, when they opened a small shop in Palermo, Sicily, called Fratelli Prezzemolo. They had some family experience to build on – Guisi’s father had previously owned a small business affiliated with the large-scale food distribution circuit. That first shop traded well – and allowed the pair to explore their love of, and interest in, Sicilian food, with years of travelling in Italy all the time keeping an eye out for short supply chains and interesting niche products. Over time they expanded, opening a series of larger and more central shops in the city, all focussed on high quality, authentic foods from quality cured meats to fresh fruit and vegetables.

      Today they have seven stores in Palermo; the Street View photo below shows one – they’re in the city centre as well as some of the quieter residential suburbs well off the tourist track. More recently the couple have started to grow the business in London – opening shops in Borough Market, Wimbledon Village, the King’s Road, and Westbourne Grove in Notting Hill – and now their fifth venture in Clapham Junction.

      So it’s a warm welcome to this interesting and enthusiastic new business, which feels well suited to the area and should do well. Landing Prezzemolo & Vitale as a tenant is also a good move by the building;s developers and landlords W.RE – who have spent several years (and many millions – we’ve written about it all many times) redeveloping the old Arding & Hobbs department store in to modern offices, with shops & leisure uses in the basement, ground and first floor. It follows the opening of Botanica Hall next door (pictured below – and which has been busy from the start), and brings something interesting, and a bit different, to Clapham Junction. In both cases, it’s fair to say that W.RE’s efforts to redevelop the premises properly, and work with the building’s remaining features and architecture to restore its original elegance and scale, have done the building justice and helped land good quality tenants that will support the continued success of the town centre.

      You could say that we had a bit of a lucky escape here, as we understand the tenant originally pencilled in for the spot was Amazon, when they were expanding their AmazonFresh chain of cashier-less supermarkets. There’s nothing wrong with Amazon, who already the owners of popular WholeFoods Market just round the corner (and even expanded it a few years back) – and chances are that business woudl also have worked in a spot as busy as this – but there’s no denying that this new opening is far more of a draw to the town centre than another supermarket offering a relatively standard range of convenience produce would have been.

      Finally, it’s all coming together again for our landmark Arding & Hobbs building. The next opening will be the luxury Third Space gym just round the corner, whose reception is now open for early membership enquiries and site tours (details here); as we have reported that is also set to be quite an impressive space.

      The final piece of the jigsaw will be the letting of the new office space on the upper floors, now equipped with smart reception area, generous roof terrace and some very light and bright spaces in the two-storey extension added to the roof. As yet there’s no news on that front, but we’ll keep you posted.

      Prezzemolo & Vitale are at 99 St John’s Rd, London SW11 1QY, moments away from Clapham Junction station. If you found this interesting, you may want to see our previous articles on the long running redevelopment of the Arding & Hobbs / Debenhams building, or on shops and food & drink traders in the Lavender Hill area. To receive new posts on lavender-hill.uk by e-mail (for free, unsubscribe anytime), sign up here.

      Posted in Arding & Hobbs, Business, Food & drink, Retail | 5 Comments

      Food waste recycling is coming to Lavender Hill – what happens to the food collected, and what is the environmental impact?

      Posted on May 3, 2024 by David

      In the next few weeks, small brown bins will appear all over the Lavender Hill area. Everyone in Wandsworth borough who currently has a front-door rubbish collection will get one – so they can use the new weekly collections of food waste from the 10th June. It’ll take a bit longer for this service to extend to flats (where the logistics of finding space in bin sheds can be quite awkward), but the plan is to roll out larger food waste bins to flats by the end of the year. You’ll be able to use these bins for any food materials – including pet foods, and anything biodegradable from food preparation, including inedible bits like bones, eggshells, fruit and vegetable skins, tea bags and coffee grounds.

      Wandsworth’s also giving everyone a year’s supply of compostable food waste bin liners to use – using these liners will keep things cleaner and easier but is up to you. After then you’ll need to buy your own; they are sold at most of our local supermarkets; they do ask that everyone checks any more liners include the ‘compostable’ logo shown to the right.

      This isn’t really something Wandsworth chose to do. National government has been trying to standardise rubbish collection arrangements for some time, to avoid the confusing situation where local authorities all collect a different set of recyclable products – in the hope that a more standard approach will be better understood, and push overall recycling rates above the current rate of about 44%. Under a new government plan every Council will have to collect a minimum range of recyclable products – which Wandsworth and Lambeth already do (indeed, they both go further than the minimum and collect other more complicated items like aerosols and Tetra Pak containers). Another new rule is a requirement for all Councils to collect food waste. This is old news to our readers in Lambeth, who have had similar brown bins for years (for houses, with plans to extend the service to flats) – but something new for Wandsworth.

      An interesting question is – is collecting and recycling food waste a good idea from an environmental or efficiency angle? The evidence is mixed. It partly depends on how the waste is taken to wherever it is processed: if it leads to miles of driving by big diesel lorries round remote rural communities to collect tiny amounts of food waste, or long trips out to far flung waste processing centres, things don’t look great. But if fairly clean modern vehicles can be used (as is the plan for Wandsworth, which is currently replacing the whole fleet) and the distances travelled kept down (where a dense town centre helps – vehicles will fill up fast with not too much driving needed), it starts to look a lot better.

      It also depends on what happens to the food waste at the other end. The best option is ‘anaerobic digestion’, which is quite a clever process. First the waste is mixed in with some water and heated up, to make sure that any notable dangers like E.coli from meat waste are eliminated, and filtered (to remove other waste and plastic (as try as we like, it’s very hard to avoid some contamination – and the same goes for recycling collections). It then goes in to a big digester, with a resident population of tiny bacteria. These bacteria are the heroes of the piece – over several weeks they will do the hard work of digesting the assorted bits of food – pretty much the same way as happens in someone’s stomach. As they do this they create heat (which goes back to be used in that killing-off-the-nasties stage at the start of the process), a sort of organic liquid fertiliser (which is sold off to farmers), and methane gas (which is collected off).

      The fertiliser is an ingenious way to put a lot of carbon back in the soil rather than it being emitted (and also avoids the need for farmers to use manufactured fertilisers). The methane can, at least in theory, be put in to the gas grid – but building a new connection to the gas pipeline network, and installing all the kit needed to check it’s the right mix of gas and the machinery compress it to the right pressure, is a slow and expensive process (and hard to do even with the benefit of a government subsidy to anaerobic digesters that make gas for the grid). This means that almost all anaerobic digestion plants include mini power stations that burn the gas to make electricity, and sell that to the grid instead (as getting a connection to the grid is relatively cheap and quick).

      Actually running one of these anaerobic digesters is as much of an art as a science! You need to get the precise mix of nutrients to keep all the little bacteria well-nourished and efficient, and to keep the temperature comfortable for them. Just like people, a good balanced diet keeps our digestion healthy – and sometimes keeping the digestion plant running means adding ingredients such as manure or other specific trace elements to the feedstock, and if you get the wrong mix of food waste you have to work hard to keep the process going – sometimes adding oatmeal in to give the bacteria a chance to recover with a bit of calm, bland food! You also need to give the bacteria time – as if you rush it the end product is a smelly mess rather than a nice clean fertiliser, and farmers find their lovely farm suddenly gets rather stinky, start getting complaints from the neighbours, and stop buying it. The way the plants are managed has a significant effect on the overall effect they have in reducing emissions – a 2022 research study found that of 30 plants in France that mostly processed agricultural waste, a decent number reduced carbon emissions compared to the more traditional approaches of muck spreading, thanks to careful recovery of all the heat produced, and careful design to avoid any methane leaks – but a fair few didn’t! But when you do get it right, it’s a really clever process that turns lots of waste in to nothing but useful products that can be sold – and ensures that the plant maximises the amount of useable energy recovered from the food waste, whether as heat, fertiliser, gas or power. The plant below is an example run by Agrivert, which recycles food waste from several London boroughs (image source / license).

      There are other ways of dealing with this waste, the most common one being to compost it – and letting it decompose to make soil. It’s a simpler process and it will get rid of the waste, but it creates a fair bit of methane in the process, a troublesome greenhouse gas, which can make the overall benefits of collection more dubious. Newer technology has helped to reduce (but not eliminate) the methane involved – mostly by using composting containers that allow more air in to the compost as it forms.

      Both of these approaches are arguably better than the current end use of this waste (which gets put on a boat and taken down the river to an incinerator in Belvedere, where it is burnt to create electricity – leaving nothing but ash and a small amount of metal and glass that got put in black bags rather than recycled). At this stage we don’t know what Wandsworth plans to do with the food waste, though the pilot programme a couple of years ago in Southfields used anaerobic digestion.

      It does mean a more bins likely to be left on pavements – although food waste bins are small and portable, and Wandsworth has wisely given residents the choice of what (if any – bags also being fine) bin to use for the rest of their rubbish, in contrast to Lambeth next door where rubbish will only be collected from official Lambeth wheelie bins on many streets. Some Lambeth streets spend most of their time flooded with hundreds of somewhat oversized bins clogging up the pavements, sticking about pretty much full-time given there’s not really anywhere else to put them in streets where the houses have minimal front garden spaces. Wandsworth Road, above, maybe typifies this issue – where each house was assigned two large bins without really thinking about their gardens being small, unfenced and sometimes sloping ledges, up steep and angled steps, and the narrow pavement not being wide enough for safe pram / wheelchair access when it is covered in bins.

      There’s one other new feature coming to Wandsworth’s rubbish collections (again, one already available in Lambeth): collection of small electrical appliances for recycling will start on the 10th June for many households who get a door-to-door waste collection, alongside the regular rubbish collection. By small, the Council means ‘up to 25cm’ – this isn’t a collection service for your old fridge! It seems that some sort of arrangement to recycle electrical goods is also on the way for flats – but this may involve collection points scattered around the Borough rather than specific bins in particular blocks. Some of these bins are already in place, like the one below (which is on Ashley Crescent). At some point in the next few years, recycling collections right across the country are also set to expand to include plastic film (like carrier bags).

      All these new collections and the infrastructure to handle the waste that’s collected are not a cheap thing to organise. The government – bound by a well-established principle that if it imposes ‘new burdens’ on local authorities, it needs to fund them – has said it will provide funding to cover ‘all reasonable costs’ to councils that come from that this new recycling requirement – including bins, collection lorries, and possible plants to store and process the waste. However they are not actually telling Councils how much they will be paid, or when, and with a central government which is not exactly known for its love of London at the moment there’s a risk that Wandsworth may end up feeling short changed!

      So – will this expansion of Lavender Hill’s recycling work? Food waste recycling seems to be doing reasonably well in Lambeth, though not a lot of data has been published on how much is collected overall and what impact that has on emissions. Wandsworth’s current overall recycling rate is about 25%, which is fairly typical for an inner London Council (where the average is 28%) but notably lower than Lambeth’s at 35% – so there’s plenty of room for improvement.

      Experience elsewhere suggests some people will become very efficient food waste recyclers, and some won’t bother – but it should lead to a reasonably steady amount of useable waste being collected. We’ll have to see if Lavender Hill’s resident foxes learn how to open the bin locks to get to a good source of food, which has been a bit of a theme elsewhere (though early tests suggest that Wandsworth’s bins are a bit more robust than the ones that have been in use in Lambeth – and waste put out in these bins may be less tempting to foxes or crows than the same waste in black bags). Overall, this is potentially a decent move for the environment – making better use of our food waste, and reducing what goes in our black bags.

      Posted in Environment, Useful to know | Leave a comment

      It’s back: a new public consultation is underway on the Clapham Junction rough sleeper hub

      Posted on April 6, 2024 by David

      We’ve written a lot about the plans for a new hub for rough sleepers on Lavender Hill. Something which could actually be a decent idea, and which is an innovative way to tackle a difficult issue and help some of the most vulnerable people in the Borough. However the plan so far has been badly executed: the Council developed the plans in secret, and put a virtually content-free planning application through the planning system in a very quiet way (as a minor change of use), which meant that it didn’t go through the usual notification processes and came as a major surprise even to next door neighbours (who only found out about the plans because of our original article! Sometimes you need neighbourhood geeks who keep an eagle eye on the planning database…).

      It caused a lot of concern on many fronts, not least because traditional homeless hostels provide an important service but are, in many cases, very challenging neighbours – and the lack of detail in the plans quite understandably led many to fear the worst, by drawing a population with many challenges from the whole of Wandsworth (as well as Richmond, as this would cover both Boroughs) to a fairly quiet residential area right next to a nursery, and near a mix of small independent retailers who really don’t need any more theft and trouble. For some it resurrected memories of the crime and antisocial behaviour that came from the now-closed St Mungo’s hostel on Cedars Road – which had a laudable aim but which really struggled to contain the impact on the surrounding estate.

      Many hundreds of comments were made on the original planning application by neighbouring residents and businesses. Lavender Hill is a neighbourhood of sensible and thoughtful people who are clearly pretty aware of how difficult it is to be on the streets, and many of the comments fell in to the camp of being quite understanding what the Council was maybe trying to achieve here – but at the same time being very concerned about the secrecy of the Council process, the striking lack of detail in the plans, the risk that this will prove to be a badly managed hostel bringing all the trouble that a population with addictions can draw in their wake to a non-town-centre location. We wrote another article, summarising the comments made and drawing out a 12 point plan for how a hostel could be made to work.

      The Council then ran a public meeting at Battersea Arts Centre late last year, which was quite a fiery affair at times – but where the Council officers did give a frank and decent insight to the thinking behind the plans, and also explained several changes they were making to the initial plans to address some few the concerns. It’s worth noting the Council officers were clearly thoughtful people, who were trying to do something positive with this project, rather than foist a nightmare on a far flung corner of the Borough.

      We summarised the main points from the meeting in this article: about half of the 12 points we suggested based on the planning consultation responses were addressed in full (such as creating an internal living space, not throwing residents out to roam around the streets in the day, ensuring rooms & services were only available on an appointment basis rather than drawing large numbers of hopefuls to the site in the early evenings, and the like). There was less clarity on others, in particular those to safeguard neighbouring traders (for example by providing food vouchers to the population who probably wouldn’t have much of an income, to avert the shoplifting hotspots that cluster round some hostels), or on how security would avoid activities banned in the hub itself simply being displaced to quite nearby streets. They confirmed that they had (admittedly belatedly) started to work with the nursery next door and the police on how to design and manage the site.

      A key point was about what the new facility is trying to actually do, and how it would work. The Council officers were at pains to stress that this was not supposed to be a ‘bed for the night’ place or a straightforward halfway house, both of which are the sort of accommodation that tends to be hard to manage, and which history has shown really does not work well in residential areas. It would instead a relatively innovative facility that would try to get rough sleepers back in to a stable environment and more permanent housing – with a substantial on-site specialist day staff getting people’s lives back on track by helping both hostel residents and others with appointments to find employment and more permanent housing, and nine rooms upstairs where the length of stay would usually measured in weeks rather than days or months. It would also have 24 hour security staff. It would have a room for clinical appointments, but was not a methadone dispensing location; and would also provide some daytime appointments for wider outreach services – again on an appointment basis. The key aim is to keep rough sleepers vaguely near their support networks, and the services they need to escape the streets – rather than the current approach of the Council having to ship people off to expensive and lonely temporary rooms on the outskirts of the city or even further afield, which tends to make their problems worse by making it far harder to them get employment, practical and emotional support. The staff also made the (fair) point that the most troublesome and menacing individuals many neighbours will have seen causing trouble in the Borough and London more widely, are frankly speaking not the type of people that are likely to engage with this new facility – it is more targeted at the quietly struggling and somewhat invisible wider population of rough sleepers. Now obviously it’s fine to say things, and some of what we heard was indeed reassuring – but none of this was spelt out in the planning application. More details, we were assured, would follow.

      But they didn’t follow, because the case went silent – for many months – with no more details being provided on the planning case. So much so that we and our partner site Clapham Junction Insider reported on rumours that the planning application might have to start again at square one.

      After a few months a leaflet was then distributed round nearby streets that included much of the content of the Q&A document that was distributed at the public meeting. And now there’s news: updated plans have gone in. And rather frustratingly, despite the talk of neighbourhood engagement, they have again gone in very quietly – in the form of a new document quietly slipped in to the back of the case file. As a result, we have yet to find anyone who has actually been properly notified that the clock is ticking again here,or that there is new information on the plans.

      The main added material is a planning application report, which summarises engagement to date with the public and the Council’s response (and which is relatively open about the concerns raised), as well as changes to the plans. At the time of writing the Wandsworth planning database seems to have gone offline, so as a public service we’ve temporarily loaded up a copy of the most interesting new file here!

      New planning documentDownload

      A quick skim suggests the main ‘new’ content is:

      • Considerably more detail on how the building will be managed, with the Council agreeing to have the specialist ‘day’ staff on site half an hour before the nursery opens and after it closes every day, and a minimum of two security staff on site at all times, backed up by on-site CCTV (a helpful change, addressing what had been a widespread concern).
      • The back of the building will now be inaccessible to residents, and windows will be frosted on that side (important – the nursery playground would otherwise be visible from a small number of bedroom windows; it’s not clear if the windows will open at the back, we’d suggest the ones on that side should be required to have restricted opening)
      • The back alley will be gated (which is sensible – otherwise it risks being a gathering spot for things not allowed in the building – but there’s no clarity on how this won’t just go to the hidden away back car park on Sisters Avenue instead)
      • The late night emergency beds have been removed and converted to a lounge for residents (definitely a good change – this needs to be stable and offer proper day- as well as night-time accommodation or residents to work)
      • All residents required to sign a no-drugs-on-site agreement on admission, with a policy of temporary / permanent eviction for breaches.
      • Confirmation no smoking or drinking ‘in communal areas’ (there had been concerns that a complete ban would merely displace that, and other problem behaviour, to the streets behind – this suggests it will be allowed in the private bedrooms which seems a reasonably sensible approach)
      • No news on the previously suggested good neighbour plans, or on the ‘resident expectation document’ including requirements on behaviour in neighbouring shops – but there is a statement that on-duty staff will have ‘specific responsibilities to uphold the safety and wellbeing of local residents and business owners’ (which needs to be followed up on – retail issues are a live challenge we’ll be reporting on in a separate article).
      • Recognition that there is a link between the underlying drivers of rough sleeping and wider behaviours including anticocial behaviour, burglary and shoplifting – and a statement that ‘The Hub aims to provide service users with essentials such as food, clothes and transport, as well as on site access to support services’ – potentially in the longer term reducing these challenges by getting its residents to a more stable living pattern (there’s not a lot of detail on how this will work in practice; we know it is a concern of some traders nearby).
      • A 24/7 ‘hotline’ for residents to report problems, and a Council led ‘Local Residents Forum’ to inform the community of project updates and expected timescales prior to opening, as well as a platform for residents to ask questions and raise concerns during the lifetime of the project (all welcome and worthy aims albeit there’s no detail yet – this new application detail wasn’t advertised…).
      • Various minor tweaks to the planned internal layout – to provide cycle parking, a laundry facility, more clearly separated staff and resident areas (as well as the sole female bedroom, which is deliberately a bit separate – noting that 13% of Richmond’s and 16% of Wandsworth’s rough sleepers are female), and a small residents’ kitchen that can (at a push) seat six.

      You have 20 days to comment on this revised application – the comment deadline is 26th April (albeit there is usually a bit of leeway after then) – before it goes to the Planning Committee in May. It has the same case number as the old one, and previous comments are still valid. However the new plans include a lot more detail on some operational aspects, some of it reassuring, as well as some areas where there’s more to do – and we suggest many will want to revisit the case with further comment. The case has a good chance of approval – now that the plans are rather clearer (the previous plans were nowhere near good enough) – however there is plenty of space to make suggestions on how the operations can be made to work as well as possible, and in particular what aspects of the development and management of the site should be included as planning conditions (as without conditions, not much is really binding – even for simple things like frosting of particular windows).

      To see the details, search for case 2023/3434 at wandsworth.gov.uk/planning. To see the main new document (the one we have included above) follow the link to ‘View associated application documents’, select ‘report’, ‘list documents’; the key one is called ‘Updated – assessment hub planning statement’. You can comment via the Wandsworth planning site or alternatively send comments to planning@wandsworth.gov.uk – make sure you include the case number in the subject line.

      This is a quick post to share the news that there is movement again on this widely reported case – it’ll likely be updated further in the coming days with more detailed thoughts on the updated proposal. We’re also interested in your own thoughts on the case, via the comments or by direct message (contact us here).

      Posted in Business, Housing, Planning | 4 Comments

      Lavender Hill retail roundup – March 2024

      Posted on March 21, 2024 by David

      A few times a year we publish a review of who has opened up businesses on Lavender Hill. Back in October last year we reported quite a lot of change – but things have settled down now. Running from east to west – Wild for Dogs‘ headquarters at 4 Lavender Hill is now well established, as a developer and supplier of handmade and organic grooming products for dogs, and M’s Dining Room who were just getting going when we last wrote are now well established, offering both an African & Caribbean takeaway and a well-reviewed dine-in offer. Good to see this doing well, and that this good-sized restaurant (which had a pretty complicated past before it closed) has had the fresh start it needed.

      We reported a while back on the challenges that hit No Boring Beer, following a huge rise in electricity costs in particular; the site is now up and running again as Spy Wines and Spirits. Owner Tim Harmsworth has been running Spy Wines as a Battersea-based wholesale supplier of wines to the trade for the last decade, and has now branched out to open their first shop at 22 Lavender Hill. It offers a wide mix of wines, spirits and beers going well beyond what you’ll see in a typical off license – from affordable everyday staples all the way to extra special rare wines – as well as a selection of cigars. The shop also includes a tasting offer, with a selection of eight wines to try in the Enomatic wine dispenser machine. The shop also has a hidden secret in the form of a much larger basement level, which has now been fitted out as a venue for wine tasting and discovery sessions; with a series of masterclasses where their expert team can guide you through some properly interesting wines in a relaxed and unpretentious environment; these have quickly proved popular (details of future events generally via their twitter / instagram, they also plan to let groups book special events).

      Yano Sushi at 39 Lavender Hill has been replaced by Go Kyoodai. They specialise in Japanese sushi – but Brazilian style, and are run by brothers Roberto and Cahuê Albuquerque. Their first venture was in São Paulo, which saw the first opening of Go Kyoodai; in 2011 they moved to London – at first running a catering-based operation but then (when they were joined by another partner Geovany Mota) branching out to run a business doing directly to the public. They were initially based in a small business estate in Fulham but have now moved in on Lavender Hill. Don’t rush down in person just yet though, because in a bit of an emerging trend they are currently running the site as a ‘dark kitchen‘ – doing delivery only – so you’ll be wanting to either order from them or via Deliveroo.

      Next door, the former Hill Launderette, which closed after decades of service (we wrote a short tribute at the time) has now got the builders in with work well underway to open as Pads, Paws and Claws, a doggy daycare and pet grooming centre, which will also sell a range of pet supplies.

      They’re not new to the area, and have been running a grooming business for some years on St John’s Hill, as well as teeth cleaning, pawdicures, flea treatments, and everything you need to keep your pet in top condition; the new larger premises will allow a wider range of daycare services to keep our pets happy – as well as space to have a calmer area for cats, and a variety of different play and relaxation areas for pets. Opening looks to be imminent – we took this photo of the old launderette sign awaiting disposal.

      Across the road, 50 Lavender Hill has been through a few ups and downs in recent years – most recently as Sugarcane (which was quickly renamed to Guava, maybe because there was already another business on the street called Sugarcane), until the business closed leaving a rent shortfall and a frankly bit of a mess! The unit was tidied up and refitted by the landlord, and quickly found a new tenant as the home of London Gents Traditional Barbers, offering you would expect. The fit out effort by the new occupiers was a comprehensive one and it now looks very smart – and has quickly found a local customer base. The team behind it already run a somewhat similar venture on Kennington Road.

      In slightly sadder news, we reported on the opening of Social Affair, in the old Room 42. This was a combination of an evening catering operation (with both eat-in and delivery), and a daytime cafe with plenty of space for working and general get togethers. The evening offer has prospered, but the front of house cafe had a break in late last week (from a known local burglar, who forced the front doors shortly after midnight and made off with a fair bit of alcohol and some computer tablets – but also made a big mess), and the owners have decided to close the cafe operation. This is a real shame coming after the team had made a real effort to get this going. For now the premises will run from about 4pm and continue to offer five different food offerings – are LovePinsa (described as ‘a cloud-like Pizza’ that has crispy textures on the outside and a super soft and scrumptious inside), Return of the Mac (specialising in Mac & Cheese for grown ups), Organic Butcher (steak & fries), NeoPixa (Neapolitan Pizza), and Wingers (fried chicken & wings). There is maybe going to be something else coming in the daytime later in the summer – maybe with stronger doors! – as it remains a good site with lots of potential.

      One of the more mysterious premises is 63 Lavender Hill, which has no signage at all. It is another ‘dark kitchen’ that supplies Snog frozen yoghurts, on a delivery-only basis. There was an equipment malfunction some time back that led to a fire; which then closed the premises as it needed a full refit. This eventually completed, and they reopened – only for a ‘take notice’ landlord sign to briefly appear, to repossess the premises. That was, however, also resolved quite quickly and the premises opened again – now supplying both Snog yoghurt and Biju Bubble Tea, and continues to serve the delivery market.

      Next door, is a bit of a success story. Back in 2022 we noted that  Ryan and Dan clinical massage had opened at 36 Lavender Hill. This wasn’t a traditional massage parlour aimed at a ‘quick rub down’ but was instead aimed at accessible and affordable treatments, particularly for those who suffer chronic / acute muscle pains and tensions, and to ease sports injuries. The co-owners were keen to change the narrative of what massage parlours and clinics currently provide, and open it up to a wider customer base in terms of ages and backgrounds who could benefit from treatments to ease their muscles. This was reflected in the more clinical and business-like design of the premises, which is quite different to the more typical styling of a massage business. And it clearly worked, as they have now moved across the road to a much bigger space at 65 Lavender Hill.

      Speaking of success stories, HD Cutz have been running since 2001, in very smart premises at 103a Lavender Hill, right next to the gates to the Battersea Business Centre – offering barbering, cornrows, locs, shaving, steam facials as well as wider bespoke hair & beauty treatments. It was a success from the outset, and owner Sheldon Edwards – who learnt his trade in Clarendon in Jamaica – has a big and loyal following. Following the opening and closing of the ill-fated China Garden in the unit next door within just a few weeks (which we reported on as rather a sad and unfortunate episode given the amount of time and money that had been lost), Sheldon has leased the unit to extend the business – and building work is well underway to knock them together. The new space will create space for a new hairstyling academy – building on his existing track record of (and enthusiasm for) developing talent.

      As we reported in November last year with a detailed review, Phresh Juice have opened a couple of doors up at 103e Lavender Hill. They are an independent family business, whose flagship product is fresh juices – properly fresh ones, made in house and to order. The menu includes a bewildering array of cold pressed juices, smoothies, ginger & turmeric fruit shots. There’s a big focus on it being properly fresh – which means availability will depend on on what decent fruit is in stock. They have also built up a healthy trade in decent coffee, pastries and cakes, all in a smart well-designed environment.

      At about the same time, we reported that another new cafe, Pique, opened at 171 Lavender Hill, with a full brunch / lunchtime food menu as well as a generous assortment of snacks, cakes and coffee.

      The works to convert the premises have really opened it up and given it a completely new feel, and the business has met great success, immediately finding a big local audience and being consistently full pretty much from the start; indeed the warmer weather will helpfully allow a bit more space outside as it’s not rare to find all the seating busy.

      Moving further towards the station we enter estate agent territory! Back in the day there were about 15 estate agents on this stretch of the road. This is still the place to find an estate agent covering the Clapham Junction area – however recent consolidation in the sector has been quite substantial, and their number has drifted down. Gordon & Co next to the post office were taken over by Foxtons, Dexters closed one of their two branches on Lavender Hill (but did open one on St John’s Road), Lauristons vanished completely to be replaced by a new branch of Costcutter (pictured above), My London Home closed and were replaced with Fitstudioz personal trainers, and Winkworth closed their large branch in the block of flats at the Lavender Hill / Latchmere Road junction. Featherstone Leigh have now also closed, having been taken over by Chestertons, and we expect the elegant corner unit at 253 Lavender Hill (pictured below) to be up for lease soon.

      This still leaves us with seven estate agents on Lavender Hill: Winchester White, Bairstow Eves, Barnard Marcus, Rochford Stokes, Dexters, Foxtons and Orlando Reid. But coupled with a similar decline in the other streets around the station, this is probably the smallest number of estate agents we have had in Clapham Junction for 20 years.

      Landlords don’t seem to have had too much trouble re-letting these premises. The most prominent ex-estate-agent, the Winkworth unit, briefly reopened as Noble Estates (another estate agent, who also have a branch in Clapham Old Town) but that all seemed to go wrong within a few months, and the unit was quickly repossessed by the landlord, with notes taped to the door giving notice that various bits of furniture and a photocopier left behind would be sold unless they were claimed. It is now set to see a complete change of use, to become a new Nisa supermarket, adding to the provision of smaller convenience stores at this end of the street.

      Meanwhile in a small bit of retail news, it’s good to see Asda have continued to work on their small garden area. This was the subject of a bit of a scandal some time back when they tried to tear down all the trees and pave over it (our article on the subject is here); fortunately they realised this wasn’t a wise move for a store that was keen to look attractive and attract a wide range of customers (let alone the environmental implications of replacing a long established green space with a pigeon-infested slab of concrete), and they changed their plans to retain the green space. It’s looking particularly good at the moment with flowering cherry trees.

      Finally there’s unfortunately another new entry on the list of the shortest running businesses of all. We haven’t even had time to report that wine bar Aperitivo had opened at 289 Lavender Hill – in a very smartly fitted out premises opposite Pizza Express. Wine was paired with a selection of food built around the Italian ritual of Aperitivo, including lasagne, charcuterie and zucchini rolls. This was a bit different, and an interesting and well-presented concept. But things quickly went off course for reasons unknown, and the business has already closed, with notices from the landlord (who, unusually, in this case, is Wandsworth Council) repossessing the unit. It’s never good to see bold new ventures like this fall over, and there’s always a sad story behind it of dashed hopes and broken dreams.

      However overall the last few months have seen far more successes than disasters, with a particularly good number of expansions and upgrades – which is testament to the resilience and imagination of a lot of our local independent traders.

      Retail roundups is an occasional series on traders in and near Lavender Hill, in Battersea, London. If this is of interest, do look at our other articles on local business, on retail,or on local food and drink, or our previous retail update from October last year. Details on how to get in touch with a tip on new businesses, or receive updates from us, are here.

      Posted in Business, Food & drink, Retail | 3 Comments